Dojo.
The sound of blows echoed endlessly through the hall.
Two figures clashed fiercely, neither gaining the upper hand. Each time one retreated, the other immediately pressed forward, relentless as a shadow.
Hiashi gritted his teeth inwardly. The puppet's body was incredibly durable—each impact sent a painful shock through his hands. He had tried targeting its joints and other supposed weak points, yet every time, the damaged parts instantly reformed through the puppet's chakra connection, rendering his attacks futile.
The Gentle Fist, the pride of the Hyuga clan—techniques like the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms—had little effect. This puppet wasn't a living being; it had no chakra network, no acupoints. What was the point of trying to seal something that didn't exist?
Hiashi quickly analyzed the situation. There were only three ways to defeat a puppet like this.
The first was brute force—completely shattering it with an overwhelmingly powerful strike.
The second was to sever the chakra connection between the puppeteer and the puppet.
And the third was to bypass the puppet entirely and attack the controller directly.
Unfortunately, Hiashi didn't possess the raw physical strength required to destroy something this solid, and damaging such an expensive creation would no doubt break his daughter's heart. As for the chakra connection—he couldn't even find it. That, more than anything, bewildered him.
In the entire ninja world, it was common knowledge that puppeteers controlled their puppets using visible chakra threads. So how on earth was his daughter moving one without them?
That left only one option.
"Hinata!" Hiashi shouted between strikes. "Let me show you the weakness of a puppeteer—your greatest flaw is your overreliance on puppets!"
But before he could act on that threat, his daughter had already dashed toward the far edge of the dojo, slipped on her sandals, and disappeared behind a large tree outside. The distance between them stretched to three hundred—no, nearly four hundred—meters.
Hiashi's jaw tightened.
"What in the world…? Since when could anyone control a puppet from this far away?!"
Just because he'd never seen it didn't mean it was impossible. Now, he had seen it with his own eyes.
The combination of the Byakugan's precision and Hinata's wireless puppet control allowed her to command her creation remotely while remaining completely safe—an almost unfair advantage.
Hiashi's face reddened. He wanted to abandon the puppet and strike directly at Hinata, but he couldn't. Every time he so much as shifted his stance, the puppet—reading his movements through Hinata's Byakugan—moved instantly to intercept him. He was completely restrained.
Shame burned within him. To be cornered by his own daughter was humiliating—but at the same time, there was something else beneath that shame: pride.
He hadn't expected Hinata's puppet to be this formidable. On her own, she couldn't match his strength, but with this creation, she had turned the tide. Even though it was just a puppet, it amplified her combat ability to an unbelievable degree.
Just as the outcome seemed certain, the puppet suddenly froze.
Hiashi stepped back, drenched in sweat, maintaining distance. He stared at the motionless puppet, confusion flickering in his eyes. Then, with his Byakugan still active, he noticed movement far away—Hinata, staggering toward him, her steps weak and unsteady. Her chakra reserves were completely drained.
Realization dawned. Hiashi couldn't help but let out a helpless sigh. So who had truly won?
If the fight had continued, he would have surely lost. But now, with Hinata's chakra depleted, she could no longer control the puppet—handing him victory by default.
After a long pause, Hiashi smiled wryly, exhaled, and despite the bruises and swelling covering his body, went to help Hinata back into the dojo.
The father and daughter sat facing each other, the puppet—eerily similar to Hinata—standing silently between them.
"Alright," Hiashi finally said, his voice calm but tinged with humility. "It seems I've underestimated you. I admit, I had my own preconceived notions… but this puppet of yours is unlike anything I've ever seen."
Hinata lowered her head shyly, fingers fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve.
"Tell me," Hiashi continued, leaning forward slightly. "How do you control it? How does it move? And where did the chakra go?"
Speaking softly, Hinata explained that her ability to control puppets wirelessly had manifested after a sudden awakening in her powers. She mentioned strange sensations in her Byakugan—itching, pain, and an unfamiliar pressure—before she had discovered this ability.
Hiashi listened in stunned silence. The Byakugan had other capabilities?
Their clan's history spanned thousands of years—could it be that some ancient records of the Byakugan's potential had simply been lost over time?
He studied Hinata's face carefully. She wasn't the type to lie, and he had raised her long enough to recognize the truth in her words. If she said it was real, then perhaps it truly was.
The possibility that the Byakugan possessed deeper, unknown powers fascinated him. He jotted down every detail Hinata mentioned in his notebook, asking a few more questions before abruptly excusing himself—likely to convene with the clan elders.
After he left, Hinata took a short rest, had a servant bring her food, replenished some of her chakra, and returned to her room with the puppet.
Not long after, a new purchase order emerged. When the branch member in charge of supplies saw the list, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. Unsure what to do, he hurried to report it directly to the clan head, Hiashi.
When Hiashi heard the report, he fell silent for a long moment.
Once, he would have scoffed at the very idea of puppets—might even have wished they didn't exist at all. But after experiencing Hinata's creation firsthand, his opinion had changed completely.
In the end, the process didn't matter—only the results did. And her results were undeniable.
From that day on, the Hyuga clan threw their full support behind Hinata's puppet research, providing resources almost without restraint.
With that assistance, Hinata completed two additional puppets as backups and prepared dozens of replacement parts for any components prone to wear or damage.
Each puppet closely resembled a human being. Without examining their eyes, one could easily mistake them for living people. However, Hinata disliked their fixed, unblinking gazes, so she crafted iron masks that covered half their faces—from the forehead down to the nose—concealing their eyes completely.
"Hmm, much better," Hinata murmured approvingly. "As long as I can see them clearly in battle, that's all that matters."
With the puppets finished, Hinata shifted her focus back to her own training.
Her original motivation for creating the puppet had been to make good use of the wireless control reward from her homeland expansion system task. Now that the project was complete and the results exceeded her expectations, Hinata was determined not to neglect her personal growth.
After a period of adaptation, she had grown accustomed to the three-hundred-pound weighted gear she trained with daily. Deciding to increase her challenge, she raised the weight—and with the help of her puppets, even that posed no issue.
Her puppets, constructed through methods entirely opposite to traditional puppet-making, were extremely heavy—each weighing over six hundred pounds. Without chakra assistance, they couldn't move at all.
Hinata removed the weighted suit she had been wearing and began carrying one of her puppets on her back. The weight felt manageable at first, so she added another. The two puppets overlapped, pressing down on her so much that her back bent under the strain, unable to fully straighten.
With more than twelve hundred pounds pressing down on her, Hinata moved step by step, her delicate feet leaving deep impressions in the ground outside her room.
Her father, Hiashi, silently watched her from a distance. Though he felt a certain pride in her perseverance, there was also a touch of irritation. He had told her not to pursue puppetry—yet she had thrown herself into it obsessively. Then, after he finally relented and supported her research, she suddenly abandoned it to focus on physical training and the Gentle Fist again. Her contradictions left him at a loss.